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So I follow The Globe and Mail on Twitter. They have been doing surveys the past week or so and have compiled statistics from census information to create an interactive section of their site where you can explore immigration in Canada.

I think immigration is vital to Canada as our population ages. If people are willing to come here, work hard, and believe in what makes our country great, all the power to them. I find the information presented on the site interesting, especially comparing where I came from to where I am now.

If I put in my old postal code, it shows the stats for all of Prince County, PEI. If I remember correctly, 2% of the population are immigrants and the majority are from the UK, the United States, and the Netherlands. In my current postal code, which is within Maple, ON, 44% of the population are immigrants and most of those are from Italy, Pakistan, and India. From my experience, Russia must be right behind these other countries. In the GTA, 50% of the population are immigrants, and they are mainly from India, China, and Italy. I know people who are here from all over.

What a different world I’m in. It’s all part of the same country, but worlds apart. It is good to know both places. My worries about our country isn’t immigration. It is the petty and small-minded people running it at the moment.

My youngest is taking tap lessons at Young Dancers of Canada. He watched a youtube video of the Little Rascals with me last year and saw a young guy dancing tap in a sailor suit. He wanted to learn how to dance like that. He didn’t forget and so after he asked again this fall we enrolled him.

One trip on the subway I saw a poster for Riverdance and it said it was the last showing. In order to make sure everyone got to see it, we had to get tickets way up high at the Sony Centre, but it isn’t a large venue so we thought it would still be worth it. I saw The Lord of the Dance at the Charlottetown Civic Centre and was pretty far away from the stage and it was still good, so I knew this would be ok.

It was great. The Sony Centre is a beautiful venue and the sound quality is excellent. (Not just compared to a rink, it is a great theatre compared to other theatres I’ve been to.) The audience was into the performance. I wasn’t expecting singing, but was pleasantly surprized. It was a very enjoyable afternoon.

And how did the youngest like it? During one musical interlude, I looked at him and he was crying. I leaned over to ask why, (quietly, of course) and at first I thought he was telling me that he was sad that the dancers were done. I explained that they had just gone behind to change and they were playing music in the meantime. But that is not what he meant. He was sad because Riverdance was not coming back to Toronto again. I had to tell him that they might still have shows in Ireland and maybe he could go see them there or that they might change their mind and come back to Toronto again in a few years to get him to stop being upset. His biggest issue was that he had looked away from the stage for a minute and missed something and there was no way for him to see it again.

An international group of scientists have found that people with a defective form of a specific protein are more likely to be killed by influenza. “Together these data reveal that the action of a single intrinsic immune effector, IFITM3, profoundly alters the course of influenza virus infection in mouse and humans.” A more readable summary is found here:

When I was in junior high, I worried about the cold war and nuclear bombs. Now that I’m an adult with children, I worry about the environment, social injustice, and global pandemics. Not constantly or obsessively, but if I am looking for something to worry about, it will most likely be one of these. I think many of us are so far removed from death that the idea that you could lose many people that you know and love all at once from a pandemic is unimaginable. I hope that research like this allows us to keep being naive to such horrors long into the future. Then we just have to learn to not pollute our own selves into extinction.

I was looking through some folders and found this video of fireworks that I recorded while on our honeymoon last July. The view is of SeaWorld from the balcony of our room at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Spa and Marina, San Diego.

I finish at the lab after 12 hours, and jog to Queen’s Park Station. I have almost an hour to get to Downsview, which used to be enough time, but it seems like the ride is longer now. It’s probably the new trains taking longer to open and close their doors or something. The wait getting in to Downsview is worse than it used to be, for sure. But I digress. Standing in the tunnel, I start to smell smoke. And I think, “Damnit, I have never been at a stop where this happened before, and I hope I’m wrong about it happening here.” One of the new trains starts to pull in to the station, but just short of reaching the platform it stops. Then it shuts off its headlights. Then a few minutes later it backs up and they announce that train traffic has stopped in both directions at Queen’s Park.

I know this sometimes takes a half hour or more, so I decide to get to St. George, where they are turning back traffic, by another route. I head east on College, planning on catching the next streetcar. As I hear one approach, I start to run, and make it to the stop in time to watch him shut the doors behind the woman who got on ahead of me. The words cannot be part of my blog.

So I get to Bloor and they are still announcing the delay. I think I’m still ahead of the game. By the time the train is passing through Bay, they are announcing the delay is cleared. At St. George I catch a new train. Probably the same damn one.

So now I wait and see if I get to Downsview before 9:30. If I miss that bus I’m going to be so frustrated. I’ll report what happens.

We lost one of our Ackie monitors to impaction. Reptilia agreed to take the other on trade for a Savannah monitor. We got her a few weeks ago, and now I introduce her to you. Her (well, she’s too young to tell for sure) name is Mollie. She’s great. I always wanted an iguana growing up, but I have come to find out that they are quite aggressive. Mollie is much more suited to a family with young children.

This container is for feeding only. Her regular enclosure is 6′ long. Jack has been great about the weird choice of pet.

I wouldn’t make much of a professional blogger. Here are the pictures I promised earlier. Plus some others. At the comedy show I had to take pictures of the video screen because the boys looked like apparitions when I took pictures of them. I’ll show you what I mean. Oh, and I included a picture of the snowmen the 2 youngest made.